


You Ain't Cinderella, and This Ain't No Coach

by SecretGeniusShittyKnight (augopher)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (like seriously giant ones), Claustrophobia, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Holster has a big dick, Lardo made the pumpkin okay, Little Spoon Holster, M/M, Pumpkins, cramped quarters, halloween party, minor panic attack description, mutual oblivious crushes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8440333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/augopher/pseuds/SecretGeniusShittyKnight
Summary: Thanks to a poorly planned out bet, Holster gets stuck in a giant paper mâché pumpkin, which, for someone with claustrophobia, is a nightmare. Good thing he has Ransom there to help him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own these characters. I merely love to play with them. Holster and Ransom are the creation of Ngozi Ukazu from her webcomic Check, Please!
> 
> Written for 13 days of Halloween. Day 13- No theme other than Halloween

“Twenty bucks says you can’t,” Ransom groaned into his cup of tub-juice as Holster sized up the massive paper mâché pumpkin in the middle of the Haus front yard.

“No, no. I think you used the wrong word there, bro. You meant to say, ‘No, I’m not gonna take that bet, because you totally _can_ fit through that access panel.”

“Au contraire, mon frère. Not only do I think you can’t fit, I will throw an extra ten down if you manage to get more than your shoulders in.” He smirked at him; thirty dollars was practically in the bag.

Holster wagged a finger at him before poking him in the nose. “I don’t care how hot you are, that smug look doesn’t suit your face.”

Ransom took a step back, downing the rest of his drink. He watched Holster gently (a feat in and of itself given their mutual state of inebriation) shimmy open the small panel Lardo had cut into the back of the pumpkin to allow her to rig strand lights in the inside. The soft, yellow light shone out small holes she’d punctured.

“Well how about that!”

“What?”

“Pretty nice in here. I just assumed it would be a bunch of shitty newspaper, but like Lards painted the inside black. There’s this truss system. Looks heavy.”

“Can’t be that bad. Her and Bitty were able to carry this thing out from the garage just the two of them.”

Then, Ransom watched himself lose first ten dollars, and then…another twenty, because Holster could indeed fit through the panel. It took quite a bit of effort though, and for a moment, Ransom was positive that the combined size of both Holster’s thighs-

Mmm those thighs. What he wouldn’t give to have them wrapped around… _Jesus, Rans, you gotta quit drinking. You’re an embarrassing sort of bisexual when drunk._

“I’m sorry, what was that?” Holster asked sticking his head back through the door. “Like this thing is a pretty fantastic sound blocker.

Ransom dragged a hand down his face. Not only did he become ‘embarrassingly bisexual’ when drunk, he apparently lost the ability to think anything without also reciting it aloud. “Nothin’, man. Now get out of there before Lardo catches you and freaks. Remember that time she loaded a Super Soaker with paint water and sprayed it in Shitty’s flow? Or that time she flung her palette like a frisbee at that lax douche who touched her sculpture in the driveway while it dried?”

Holster winced. “Oh yeah.”

“Now,” he said, patting Holster on the head, “I don’t want that to be you.”

Holster obliged him and disappeared back into the pumpkin. Moments later, his legs made their way through the hatch, but that is as far as he got. With some wiggling, a little shifting, a bit of turning, he tried again from a different angle only to meet resistance at the (previously mentioned) glorious thigh area.

Once more, Ransom’s thoughts drifted into decidedly “unbrolike” territory as he pictured those legs bare and splayed on a bed they’d both wreck…

Stop it. Just stop.

“Um, Ransom, Rans, Ransypoo, sunshine…I’m how you say…stuck.”

Ransom pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just, I don’t know man, go back out the exact way you went in. Look, I’m too drunk to figure this shit out. You’re gonna have to free yourself.”

“But like… I don’t remember exactly how I got in before. There was a bit of- ahem- readjustment that needed to happen mid-entrance, and like it should have worked like before but, I’m stuck.”

Wait. What? “Dude, did you just imply that your gigantic head, scarily broad-yet hot shoulders, and gloriously huge thighs made it through the door but you’re stuck because of your junk?” How in the hell had Ransom missed _that_ all these years? Oh yeah, proper locker room bro etiquette…brotiquette- he chuckled at his portmanteau.

However, now that the mental image was in his head, there was no way it was _ever_ leaving his head now. Oh good Lord, he was salivating at the revelation Holster had a big dick. Someone should just hit him right over the head with one of those Styrofoam headstones Bitty insisted they decorate the lawn with, because he was certain his brain had stopped working..

“Um, yeah. That is what I’m saying. Come on. You can chirp me later all you want, man. Just help me get the fuck out of here. It’s a little creepy.”

“You said it was nice in there.”

“Well, it was before I got my ass stuck in here. Now, it’s creepy, and like I seriously overestimated how much space there was in here, man. And I’m feeling really claustrophobic right now. Can you just help me out of here before I start to panic?”

Well now, that wouldn’t do. Look, he may have a serious case of test anxiety. Bitty had his anxiety over checking, and Jack had anxiety over…a lot of things. The point was, even Holster, loud, outgoing Holster had his “thing” that sent him into a tailspin of panic. And that thing was small, dark spaces, a result of a game of hide-and-seek as a kid wherein his older cousin convinced him to hide in the dryer and shut the door. It had taken almost an hour for someone to come looking for him. Frankly, Ransom was surprised Holster wanted to go into the pumpkin in the first place. But here they were.

Ransom popped his head in through the door. “Just take some deep breaths. Okay. If you can turn yourself around, maybe come out head first…”

And nope. That was as disastrous as the first through fifth attempts. Finally, Ransom gave up trying to help Holster escape. “Maybe I can find Lardo and ask if she’d be okay with me making the door on this a bit bigger so we can free you. I know it’s for an art project that’s graded, but if I do it carefully, it will look okay.” _I think. I hope_. “I’ll be right-”

“No, don’t you dare leave!” Holster whined, almost desperate. “Please, it’s like I’m suffocating in here.”

“I know it’s scary, but I promise, you have enough air in there. You are _not_ going to suffocate. I’ll be five minutes tops.”

He walked away to the sound of Holster begging him to come back. Yeah, were he entirely sober, Ransom would have kicked his own ass for his lapse in bro-duties, but as it stood, he thought this idea was sound. It was, until five minutes turned to ten minutes, turned to he lost track of how many minutes. Where in the hell was Lardo?

So he made his way back to the pumpkin only to find Holster crying, chest heaving, and gasping for breath. “You gotta get me out of here, Rans,” he panted. “Oh God, this must be what it feels like to be buried alive.”

Ransom reached a hand inside the pumpkin, a comforting gesture, but Holster grabbed it and squeezed hard. Once, on a roadie, the door on the bus bathroom got stuck with Holster inside. _That_ had been a rough five minutes until a bump in the road jostled the door just enough to rattle it open. Holster had stumbled out and fallen into Ransom’s arms. This was as close as he could- then again…

“Hey, Holtzy?”

“Uh huh?”

“How much room do you have in there? Are you all balled up?”

“I’m not actually being squished, if that’s what you mean.”

“Move out of the way. I’m coming in.” This was a foolish idea, and he knew he would regret it in the morning when his hips and shoulders ached from the cramped quarters, but this was Holster, his best bro for life. The very same best friend who had helped him through countless anxiety ridden days where he hid under tables in the library panicking about exams. Getting stuck, too, was the _least_ he could do.

“What? No, you don’t-”

“Too late. Oh look, my head and shoulders are already in. Won’t be long until- ungh. Yep, well my ass barely fit, but- hmph- Gah!” Though it was a struggle, he managed to pull himself inside. It was most definitely a bit of a squeeze, but then Holster fell into his chest, and as Ransom wrapped his arms around him, he thought it was a comfortable tight fit. “There we go. Just keep breathing. Is it better now that I’m here with you?”

Holster nodded against his chest. “But now we’re both stuck.”

“And in the morning, when they take out the trash, I’ll get someone to help us out. For now, this is all you got.”

For a long while, only the muffled sounds of the party hung in the air between them. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have thought I could fit.”

“Well, in your defense,” he said, rubbing calming circles into Holster’s back, “you _did_ fit. You just couldn’t get out.”

Holster’s wet laugh was a welcome sound. “Still sorry though. You probably had a hookup waiting, and I ruined it.”

He shrugged. “No, I struck out big time.”

“Again. That’s like five Kegsters in a row. What is wrong with our fellow Wellies? Who in the hell would _ever_ turn _you_ down?”

Truth was, Ransom hadn’t tried at all, and hadn’t for those five Kegsters and counting. Holster, himself, had been going through a dry spell, and well, part of him, he guessed, was showing solidarity. The other, much larger, part of him simply didn’t _want_ anyone else. He’d been working through his sexual orientation for over a year. It had been…tough.

It wasn’t as though he was ashamed or internalizing biphobia or anything. It was just… Look, he’d been told many times, by many people, that coming out was a process, a process that varied from person to person. Some people had it easy. Some…well not so much.

He already had to deal with the gross stereotype of the ‘hypersexual black man’, and just hearing things people would say about bisexuals being greedy, or conversely, being a phase or stepping stone to full gay (and dude…really? full gay? No wonder Holster had  such a cynical opinion of people as a whole. As a whole? People sucked like a black hole) was enough to make him close that closet door for another six months.

What changed?

Well, Holster did. Or should he say, his feelings for him changed, became more clear. So, when Ransom said he ‘struck out’, what he really meant was, he didn’t bother trying. None of those possible hookups were the person he really wanted, so why waste the effort? Especially, when he could feign failure and spend the rest of the night huddled in Holster’s bunk, sharing a blanket as they watched bad SyFy channel movies? Would anyone whose name he barely remembered when the sun came up be as gratifying as being crammed in Holster’s bed when exhaustion got the better of them, and he, too tired to try climbing up to his bed, would just…stay put? Would the arms of someone he met the night before feel as safe as the one Holster _always_ seemed to throw over his waist when they shared a bed?

No. The answer to all of those questions was no. And, he knew what all of that meant. It was the getting it out in the open that was the hard part.

“Feeling better?”

“Yeah.. You’re the best, Rans. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. They do? Tell me, and I shall defend your honor.”

Feeling, emboldened by the drink and close proximity, he licked his lips. “Hey, Holtzy, can I tell you something?” he asked, reaching out to tug on a strand of the lights, pulling them into the pumpkin. As terrifying as saying all this aloud was going to be, he still wanted to see Holster’s face. To gauge his reaction, not like wax poetic about the way the tiny lights illuminated his face in ethereal shadows, a word which , Ransom was certain had never been used to describe Holster in any way.

“Yeah,” Holster said, his voice wary and tinged with concern.

_Here goes nothing._ “I didn’t strike out. Not tonight. Not any of the nights. I…I love you. I don’t expect you to recip-”

His words were cut off by Holster’s lips against his own. What in the- No. There was no way he could have possibly missed the signs here. When Bitty called Holster a large boy with a large amount of emotion, he hadn’t been exaggerating. Holster was _incapable_ of hiding his feelings. Or at least, Ransom had thought he was.

None of that mattered now. Not when the heat of Holster’s breath against his neck had his heart about to leap out of his chest. Not when those massive hands of Holster’s had found their way under his shirt. Still, he was wholly unprepared when Holster climbed into his lap, forcing the air out of his lungs with a huff.

“Wow, you’re heavy. You been working out more?”

“You know I have,” Holster mumbled against the skin of Ransom’s throat before rolling a bit of skin between his teeth and leaving behind a mark.

“It shows.” And damn. Ransom was already out of breath from just this. Yet, every nerve in his body was alight and aching for more. He mentally cursed their current space constraints and broke the kiss. “I’d love to keep doing this and then some, but I think I have a support beam digging into my back, and not gonna lie, I don’t want our get together story to end with a ‘and then we fucked in a giant pumpkin’. Just not a great conversation starter.”

“S’that what this is? Our get together?” Holster sounded so small, almost fearful.

As if Ransom could say no to him, not when he could barely go a day without talking to him, not when every time he thought about his future (and every scenario it could possibly play out) Holster was _always_ in it. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he hadn’t been able to say no or deny Holster anything since about three months into their friendship. It was an ability he hoped he never acquired, to be frank.

“If you want it to be, because…Fuck. I am so gone on you.”

“Me too,” he said, once more into Ransom’s neck.

“What do you say we make ourselves as comfortable as we can in here, and in the morning, you and me…how does brunch as a first date sound?”

“Sounds the best.”

Though it took several minutes of shuffling, Ransom managed to find a way to sit that wouldn’t leave him incapacitated in the morning. He’d made sure to leave enough room beside him for Holster to sit without hitting a support truss. To his surprise though, Holster sat in between Ransom’s outstretched legs and leaned back, his back to Ransom’s chest.

“This okay? I’m not too heavy?”

“No.” He thought a moment, a small chirp bouncing around in his head. No, it was far too good to pass up. “Adam Nathaniel Birkholtz, have you been holding out on me? Are you… are you a little spoon guy?”

His chirp went right over Holster’s head. Instead, Holster just snuggled closer with an ‘mmhmm’ in response. Ransom pressed a kiss to Holster’s hair, right behind his ear. “Good. Cause I’m a fantastic cuddler. The best big spoon.”

“Can’t wait.”

**Author's Note:**

> come visit me on [Tumblr](http://secretgeniusshittyknight.tumblr.com)


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